Portable electronic devices are widely deployed to provide various capabilities such as viewing and hearing of video, music, voice, and other multimedia. In order to hear the audio portion of these capabilities, an audio amplifier is used to drive a speaker to produce sounds. Additionally, the audio source signal types can be of varying quality and bandwidth. Accommodating the myriad of source signal types can increase the complexity of an audio amplifier design.
There is a continual growth of users of portable devices which have the ability to play audio in its various forms while keeping device size to a minimum. To minimize the size of a device, manufacturers typically incorporate increasing functionality into an application specific integrated circuit (ASIC) instead of discrete components. In order to amplify an audio signal so that it can drive an external speaker, the power amplifier must be able to increase the power of the source signal.
As it is known in the art, power amplifiers translate a source signal into an amplified electrical output signal and heat. The ratio of energy used for amplified electrical output to heat dissipation is known in the art as thermal efficiency. Small size ASICs, due to their small packaging, do not have the ability to sink a great deal of heat. Therefore, ASICs which incorporate high thermally efficient designs in small packaging while being low cost and low complexity are desired. One such amplifier class is known in the art as the Class D amplifier.
The advantages of Class D amplifiers over other type of amplifier configurations are well known. The reference titled “Class D Audio Amplifiers: What, Why, and How”, by Eric Gaalaas, in Analog Dialogue, published by Analog Devices, Vol. 40, No. 2, pp. 1-7, is incorporated herein by reference. As explained, it is desirable for power amplifier systems to accommodate source signals, typically audio signals, of various bandwidths and to do so in a manner that eliminates or reduces noise from different sources.